Category: Big Food & Beverage Giants

From Starbucks to IBM , the use of artificial intelligence by big companies to alter your behavior is becoming a major thing. Lionel talks about how big companies use our data to alter consumers’ behavior.

Pioneering food scientist and top selling author Mike Adams reveals why the new movie called “Food Evolution” is pure propaganda and disinformation from the chemical industry that poisons our food. Read more about the film at FoodEvolution.news.

When Amazon boss and billionaire Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013, he also had an ongoing $600 million contract to provide cloud computing services to the CIA. That meant the Washington Post, which already had a long history of cooperation with the CIA, renewed their wedding vows with the Agency and doubled down on the alliance.

By any reasonable standard of journalism, the Post should preface every article about the CIA, or article sourced from the CIA, with a conflict of interest admission: TAKE THIS PIECE WITH A FEW GIANT GRAINS OF SALT, BECAUSE OUR NEWSPAPER IS OWNED BY A MAN WHO HAS A HUGE CONTRACT TO PROVIDE SERVICES TO THE CIA.

Now Bezos and his company, Amazon, have bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. Whole Foods is the premier retailer of “natural” foods in America.

The degree of profiling of Whole Foods customers will increase by a major factor. Amazon/CIA will be able to deploy far more sophisticated algorithms in that regard.

It’s no secret that many Whole Foods customers show disdain for government policies on agribusiness, health, medicine, and the environment. Well, that demographic is of great interest to the Deep State, for obvious reasons. And the Deep State will now be able to analyze these customers in finer detail.

At the same time, the Amazon retail powerhouse will exercise considerable control over the food supply, since it will be selling huge numbers of food products to the public. Amazon will have new relationships with all the farmers Whole Foods has been using as suppliers.

Perhaps this disclaimer posted on every Whole Foods item is now in order: KEEP IN MIND THE FACT THAT THE OWNER OF WHOLE FOODS, AMAZON, HAS A VERY TIGHT RELATIONSHIP WITH THE CIA. USE YOUR IMAGINATION.

Then there is this. The CIA has its own private company, called In-Q-Tel, which was founded in 1999 to pour investment money into tech outfits that could develop new ways to facilitate “data collection,” and service other CIA needs. In-Q-Tel, Jeff Bezos, and Amazon are connected. For example, here is a 2012 article from technologyreview.com:

“Inside a blocky building in a Vancouver suburb, across the street from a dowdy McDonald’s, is a place chilled colder than anywhere in the known universe. Inside that is a computer processor that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, believe can tap the quirks of quantum mechanics to unleash more computing power than any conventional computer chip. Bezos and In-Q-Tel are in a group of investors who are betting $30 million on this prospect…”

Nextgov.com described the deal this way: “Canadian company D-Wave Systems raised $30 million to develop quantum computing systems. Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment company of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and CIA venture capital arm In-Q-Tel participated in the latest funding round, the firm announced. The company’s quantum computing technology seeks to speed up data-crunching. If successful, the technology could aid automated intelligence gathering and analysis.”

Yes, automated intelligence gathering and analysis are exactly what outfits like Amazon and the CIA need for profiling the public. Other companies who have purchased products from D-Wave Systems? Goldman Sachs and Lockheed Martin. Let’s see: Amazon, CIA, Goldman, Lockheed—a formidable collection of Deep State players.

“Buy your food from the purest natural retailer in the world, the CIA. Oops, I mean Amazon. Oops, I mean Whole Foods.”

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

If you’re regular at Costco or Kroger, avoid buying the chicken next time. Alongside Albertson’s/Safeway, Publix, and Walmart, these massive grocers failed when it came to selling antibiotic-free chicken to the public. All five retailers fell short in a survey conducted by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), reported OrganicAuthority.com. Each one received a grade of “D” when it came to their lack of progress on the promotion of antibiotic practices, and their inability to provide antibiotic-free chicken offerings.

For their survey, the NRDC looked at the retailers’ branches in Charlotte, Chicago, Houston, Jacksonville, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia. The NRDC selected these cities to represent the country’s four census regions. These locations were then graded according to the following categories: policy (20 points), consumer education at point of purchase (five points), brand score antibiotic use (20 points), and brand score certification (10 points). The raw total of these categories was 55 points, and each grocer scored as such: Walmart received 20.9 points (38 percent), Albertson’s/Safeway received 21.5 points (39 percent), Publix received 21 points (38 percent), Kroger received 18.4 points (33 percent), and Costco received 22 points (40 percent).

Sans Costco, all other retailers scored poorly in policy, which was defined as “Commitment to phase out routine use of antibiotics described on major retailer website” and “Timeline to phase out routine use of antibiotics described on major retailer website.” This was especially notable, as large chicken producers like Tyson and Perdue have moved away from or pledged to move away from the use of antibiotics. Walmart was noted as the biggest offender in this regard. Not only does the company have the most number of suppliers with antibiotic-free chicken products, but Walmart has called for greater transparency from producers. Moreover, the NRDC discovered that the retailers’ own private-label chicken brands were sourced from producers with questionable antibiotic-free practices. (Related: Perdue announces that its chicken products are now 95 percent antibiotic-free)

As for helping consumers in making informed choices, only Publix had the necessary signage in all of their stores. All of their branches had displays that informed consumers of producers with responsible antibiotic policies. However, this did not include producers who were still in the process of phasing out antibiotics from their products. Though all the retailers offered United States Department of Agriculture (USDA)-certified chicken or Raised Without Antibiotics (RWA) chicken, there were no indications that these poultry products had been certified by third parties.

Whole Foods may not have included in the survey, but the NRDC lauded it as the sole grocer to “have earned top score in all categories.” Their policy to sell antibiotic-free livestock products goes beyond chicken and covers beef, pork, and turkey. Whole Foods also made it easier for consumers to understand their purchases better, something that all the other retailers failed to do.

The NRDC concluded their survey by asking for retailers to commit themselves to the elimination of antibiotic-laden products from their chains, and for consumers to “vote with their wallets” by purchasing RWA and USDA-certified chicken.

Carmen Cordova, a staff scientist under the Food and Agriculture Program of the NRDC, said this about the results of the survey: “The top five grocery store chains in the country feed millions of Americans, so their actions have a big impact on public health — for better or worse. Supermarkets can either continue to ignore the spread of drug-resistant infections, or they can answer their customers’ call to be a part of the solution.”

Rather than curing diseases among chickens, antibiotics are more often used to promote quicker growth in the animals and to prevent them from getting sick. According to OrganicAuthority.com, this practice allows antibiotic-resistant bacteria to thrive, which in turn is extremely harmful to humans and animals alike.

When I first discovered the world of holistic health and nutrition, and saw the ignorance from whence I had come, I thought my health problems would be gone forever. It would be easy — all I needed to do was to implement the information I was discovering.

This was the formula I’d learned in school. Find the answer, and the problem is solved. Do what you are told. I’d been told the wrong information, but now I’d discovered the right.

Yes, it wasn’t long before I encountered a problem: Information overload. No one can implement all of these, even if they didn’t sometimes contradict each other (vegan and paleo for instance). At some point one wonders, how many “must have” supplements must I have? A rebelliousness sets in: it isn’t supposed to be so complicated. Should a person have to sift through numerous scientific articles just to be healthy? (Or trust someone to do it for them?) How do we know which expert to trust? In a more innocent time, we trusted the (supposedly) impartial self-correcting mechanisms of scientific publishing. When the flaws in that system are exposed — the influence of money and politics, the quashing of dissent, the institutionalized confirmation bias — then what is left? Whom do we trust, when the old authorities are discredited and so many new ones are vying for our attention, many with a product to sell?

The response I’ve worked with for fifteen years has been to develop inner authority as a way to cut through the fog of so many dubious and contradictory outer authorities. Inner authority is based on sensitivity to, and trust in, the communication coming from the body. That is easier said than done in an age of distraction, in an age of dissociation from the body, and in a society that constantly asks us to surrender our sovereignty to medical, educational, and other authorities. The formula for doing it right that I learned in school — to find the answers out there — is itself part of the problem.

To establish inner authority means to learn to distinguish authentic appetites from desires that come from displaced needs. Needs are displaced when the the thing we really want, the thing that meets the need, is unavailable, whether through circumstance, lack of knowledge, or emotional blockage. The unmet need could be for something like intimacy, meaning, connection to nature, fulfilling work, or adventure. An unmet need generates both discomfort and desire, and that desire often gets channeled onto something — such as junk food, overeating, alcohol, or another addiction — that doesn’t meet the actual need. For example, someone who lacks deep, unconditional self-acceptance might be compelled to frequently give themselves a treat to confirm (on an unconscious level), “Yes, I am a good girl. I am loved.” Or maybe you eat because you are lonely. Or snacking offers a respite from a lite that is just a little intolerable.

This leads to a second reason why finding correct information may only be a first step: Just because you know what to do doesn’t mean you will actually do it. People bring things into their bodies — and their lives — all the time that they know are not good for them. We do things that we have vowed to abstain from, and fail to do what we’ve promised ourselves. Why?

Until we can resolve this question, having the right information will not be enough. Displaced needs explain a lot of it. if the real need is for intimacy, no amount of sugar — which gives a momentary experience of something like intimacy, and momentary relief from the discomfort of it — will be enough to meet that need. You can eat it and eat it, and blame yourself for your weak willpower, but actually it is just that you are trying to meet a need. Maybe the reason it is unmet is that the marriage has become stagnant and real communication has broken down. Maybe secrets and pretenses are in the way of true intimacy. Changing your diet or switching supplements is unlikely to change that. But then maybe you have a breakthrough in your relationship, and voila — the craving goes away. Until then, the sugar is helping to maintain the status quo.

Various addictions usually fit this pattern. Coffee as a substitute for the natural motivation of following a life purpose. Gambling as a substitute for taking bold risks. News addiction as a substitute for a feeling of power and agency. I’m grossly generalizing and simplifying here, but I think you get the idea. You cannot make an addict stop using by telling him that it’s “bad for you.” You cannot make yourself stop that way either. The information is not enough, and neither is the kind of willpower that comes through a regime of threats and incentives.

How then can we identify and meet the displaced needs? How can we know when a food or a practice or a supplement is meeting a real need? And how can we align desire and discipline so that we can choose beneficial things effortlessly, and effortlessly avoid that which harms? The answer to all three of these questions comes from the same fundamental practice. Put simply, the answer is available through the power of attention directed toward the body and its sensory experience. When we can fully receive and integrate the experience of taking something into the body (or into life), then we know it on a body level; we know what it is and what it is not. Then it take no more willpower to decline harmful foods than it does to stop from jamming your thumb into your eye. Because you know, on a body level, that it hurts.

To establish this kind of direct feedback, so that harmful things become repellent and helpful things become attractive, requires integrating body responses over time. It also requires unlearning a lot of habits that seem totally normal in our culture, and bringing into consciousness the unconscious ways in which we avoid feeling.

I give a fuller description of this process in my online course, Dietary Transformation from the Inside Out, including meditations and take-home practices to reprogram new habits over a period of a few weeks. The goal is to establish a kind of ease and freedom, a release of struggle, an aligning of health and pleasure, and a trust in inner authority.

I hope I have not unduly simplified a complex issue in this brief article. Another crucial piece of the puzzle include the ways our culture deadens us to subtle body information and how to recover sensitivity to it. Even more important, perhaps, is the realization that a state of diet is a state of being — something must shift before a person is ready to inhabit a higher level of vitality. If the readiness is there, new health habits are easy to adopt. if it is not, then the energy coming from the miracle supplement or superfood or yoga practice will just be consumed by a correspondingly intensified addictive habit. Maybe you’ll feel great so you’ll drink more to bring you down to an energy level that fits your life right now.

Truly, the journey toward better health leaves no aspect of life untouched.

Of course, none of this means that information from researchers and experts is useless. It is in fact extremely valuable, because it gives the techniques I describe something to operate on. It opens up a new menu of possibilities on which to exercise inner authority.

Furthermore, there is a natural complementarity between the inner, attention-based process I’ve mentioned and the world of natural or holistic health. We sense a kinship between them, because both are part of a transition from a belief system in which well-being comes through the domination or conquest of nature, to one in which nature is our ally and teacher. Both also affirm that health is not a matter of fighting the body — neither imposing pharmaceutical control over it, nor imposing willpower over it based on mental knowledge. Holistic health isn’t about substituting one body of expert opinion for another. It is about reclaiming our power through a return to nature.